IOWA CITY, Iowa – Arm in arm, Tom Crean and Yogi Ferrell shared the moment they dreamt of more than five years ago.

When their journey started, Crean stood in the hospitality suite in the Park Tudor gym on the night before Thanksgiving, 2010. Ferrell committed to Indiana, nodded at Crean and entered into an unspoken pact to bring the Hoosiers to moments like these.

Ferrell's 24-foot 3-pointer with 37 seconds left gave them one, an outright Big Ten championship, after a nail-biting 81-78 win on Tuesday in Iowa City. A regular season left for dead in December will end with the No. 12 Hoosiers (24-6, 14-3) atop the Big Ten standings in March.

The game was a testament to Ferrell’s toughness, to Indiana’s resiliency not just on one night but over an entire season, and to the best coaching job Crean has done in eight years in Bloomington. The pair shared a tight embrace after the final horn, in a game that gave Ferrell his Big Ten Player of the Year moment, and Crean his Big Ten Coach of the Year win.

This night began in front of a sold-out Carver-Hawkeye Arena, and when struggling Iowa hit four of its first five shots, Indiana had to brace itself.

And it did in the way it knows best – picking Iowa apart from behind the 3-point line. The Hoosiers hit eight first-half 3-pointers, and led by six at the break. That lead ballooned to as much as 14 midway through the second half, but Indiana struggled with fouls, committing 12 in the second half and 25 for the game.

With sophomore guard Robert Johnson injured, Crean had to dig into his bench for unusual lineups and unorthodox rotations. Freshmen OG Anunoby, Juwan Morgan and Harrison Niego – the last of them a walk-on – played a combined 45 minutes.

But no one was more valuable than Ferrell. He scored a game-high 20 points on a game-high 19 shots. At times, he was willing the ball into the basket. When Iowa rallied to lead by two late in the game, no one stood firmer than the old Park Tudor point guard.

That 24-foot clinching shot looked like the ones Crean has often said Ferrell seeks, rather than shies away from. It looked like the potential game-winner at Maryland last season, except it went in. In a race he does not deserve to lose but probably will anyway (to Michigan State guard Denzel Valentine), Ferrell at least concluded his argument in style.

"He came in a champion, he helped us win a championship the first year, and so far right now, he’s got one this year,” Crean said. “Lot of great days, lot of hard days, but I love him to death. To be a part of it with him and watch him grow, it’s fantastic.”

Crean has openly stumped for Ferrell’s candidacy for player-of-the-year awards, and rightfully so. When he lost James Blackmon Jr. for the season in late December, IU’s coach turned the load Ferrell wasn’t already shouldering over to his senior point guard, who responded by carrying Indiana to an outright conference title.

But what of the coach, who himself was under backbreaking public pressure after a blowout loss at Duke? There were open calls for Crean’s head then, but as college basketball began to give up, Indiana rallied around its coach.

Indiana won Tuesday because of Ferrell’s points, but also because of Crean’s adjustments. Faced with crippling foul trouble, he assembled makeshift lineups and made them work. So Ferrell was happy to return the favor Tuesday, when asked if Crean should win the conference’s coach-of-the-year award.

And the journey that began that rainy night in Indianapolis, which wound through one Big Ten title, a lot of turmoil on and off the court, and finally to a cold Iowa City night, found a coach and his point guard standing together on the Carver-Hawkeye Arena court.

​They had seen the top and the bottom together at Indiana. They had just sealed another outright crown. Crean coached the game of the season, in perhaps the season of his career. Ferrell hit the shot that sealed it, in what is certainly the season of his career.